


the way to you

by wondergirls (glassywater)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, M/M, university! AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 07:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17402489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassywater/pseuds/wondergirls
Summary: Being young, lost, and alone leads the mind and heart to wander, into strange places.





	the way to you

Baekhyun first saw Jongin at the intersection of Naksungdae Station and the highway that eventually cut into Cheongnim-dong and then the Han expressway. He was lost (even though he had a general idea of where he was on campus); trying to find the spare vocal recording studio on the music department’s widespread campus using the map on his phone.  
He’d only been at Seoul National University three months of the year, and hadn’t had any vocal sessions during the overbooked studio season since the winter recital. 

The sun shone weakly, occasionally bursting through dark clouds. Wind whipped his coat around and he kept having to push his hair back from his face. He wasn’t wearing any gloves; left them at his place because he had overslept and was in a hurry on his way out. It hadn’t started snowing in Seoul but the rains got colder and colder as January drew to a close.  
There was a dark figure standing in the corner of his vision by the signpost. The person wasn’t wearing a coat, only a thin long sleeved t-shirt and their shoulders were hunched forward. His eyes caught on his stern face as the person turned. 

At that time, Baekhyun did not register the exactitude of his face, only the pinched look between his eyebrows and a set of full, downturned lips. The person looked like a student, and Baekhyun debated asking for directions. Right as he summed up the courage to ask, the pedestrian lights turned green and the person crossed the four lane highway and walked into a side street.  
Baekhyun eventually found the music studio (he had to walk back to university’s main administrative building and ask for directions only to find he had been walking in the right direction) though he was already too late for his session by then.

The encounter slipped from his mind afterwards and all he remembered was that he found the man handsome. That’s all it was, an attractive person walking around SNU’s campus and with that many students crammed into one of South Korea’s most expensive and exclusive universities, there were bound to be some attractive people. Baekhyun, on the other hand, could barely afford the tuition even with a partial scholarship. On top of that, Seoul was one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, and he couldn’t hold a job during term time without jeopardising his lessons and thus, losing the partial scholarship. His parents had looked a little disappointed to find out that he had only secured a 60% bursary into the music and performance program, especially since they had paid for classical voice and piano lessons after school since he was nine.  
He was using his savings from working arduously over the summer after the bursary letter came in, and some money Baekbeom lent him before Baekhyun left home. Somehow, he was still here; three months after orientation, music theory essays and a winter recital. 

The Christmas and Seollal break felt like a blip in time spent between lying in bed scrolling through Instagram and idol fansites and, sneaking out to drink with Jongdae late at night. Baekhyun left home a week before break ended, crafting some half-lie about prep workshops; he couldn’t take the pressure he felt from his parents’ and the rest of the neighbourhood’s gazes. (“what will he do next? this music thing is really ridiculous… most people grow out that dream by now”).  
Baekbeom had looked at him a little sadly at the train station and he almost rescinded, almost walked off the platform at the set of his hyung’s mouth. But the door slid shut and Baekhyun simply settled into his seat.

***

Baekhyun walked out of the music building, late as usual. He had nothing substantial to eat at the dorm, and didn’t want to do his measly grocery shopping till the end of the week when prices were reduced. There were a couple of delivery places dotted on the main street, but he wasn’t too eager to return to his small, cold room.  
The air was crisp enough for him to wind his scarf tighter around his face and he set to finding a place to eat. His legs led him farther and farther from the bustling shopping district that surrounded the music building and the rest of the campus as his mind wandered. Away from Bucheon, from Seoul, from Korea, maybe, and flung him into Czech concert halls in front of applauding audiences.

His sprawling thoughts were interrupted by a dull throbbing in his soles. Baekhyun looked at his scuffed loafers. Not walking shoes. He lit up his phone screen to see the time; almost ten-thirty. He’d been walking for almost twenty five minutes. He looked around and vaguely recognised the neighbourhood. As he paid more attention, he saw a ramen shop just ahead of him and walked to it.

It was a small shop, with some outdoor seating. The outdoor flooring was tiled with rubber mats with a smattering of small stools and round formica tables. There was a line of vending machines on one end of the makeshift patio and stacks of tabletop grills for bulgogi.  
A middle-aged woman sat alone by one of the tables with empty plates in front of her. She looked up from her newspaper when Baekhyun came in.

She studied him for a moment and then turned back to her paper. Without looking up, she cried, “Jongin-ah! There is a customer!”  
Baekhyun bowed to the woman and walked towards the wooden counter set in the middle of the shop. He heard shuffling steps then looked down at the stack of menus. Baekhyun looked back up when he left the air in front of him shift and a shadow fell across the counter.  
A full smile, nearly cracking at the corners, on a turned up mouth greeted him. The boy was taller than him but probably younger and had an enviably striking face. Olive skin undisturbed by acne until it reached south to his chin marked with day old stubble. A pair of clear, brown eyes. A somewhat flat nose that complimented the rest of his face, but wouldn’t have worked on anyone else.  
Baekhyun realised he was staring.

“Uh, hello? Do you want something?” Jongin’s smile disappeared and shook Baekhyun out of his trance.  
Baekhyun coughed into his shoulder and looked back at the menu. He could feel the heat rising in his cheek. In a hurry, he chose the first item that caught his eye.  
“Yes, I’ll have the um, seollengtang.”  
Jongin nodded and wrote something down on a slip of paper and began walking back towards the stove.  
“Here or to go?” Jongin asked as he opened two taps in the large sink behind him and steam began to rise.  
Baekhyun couldn’t really imagine eating here after staring, but he also couldn’t quite make himself go back to the dorm just yet.  
Jongin repeated the question. “Did you hear me? I said here or to go?”  
Baekhyun cleared his throat and asked, “When do you close?”  
“Excuse me?”  
Baekhyun straightened his shoulders. “I want to eat here but I need to know when you close so that I don’t put you out.”  
Jongin raised an eyebrow. “Oh. Well, usually at eleven but we can stay open longer. Eomma likes to hang around till she feels like and I’ll be cleaning after.” Jongin closed his mouth quickly and looked surprised at how much information he just gave away.  
Jongin laughed, feeling awkward and nervous and turned back to warming up the miso base.  
Baekhyun said, hoping for a laugh, “That’s good customer service.”  
And what a laugh he got in return. Jongin’s laugh chimed like a child’s. His nose scrunched up and his eyes curved cutely. 

Jongin shot a small smile at him. “Yeah, it is. Hopefully, the food is good too.”  
Baekhyun smiled back.

***

Back in Bucheon, Baekhyun used to be known as the class clown. Amongst his friends, he was the most invited to seniors’ parties, to dance and make jokes and generally provide entertainment for the snide seniors drinking while underage. Then he was still starry eyed about getting scouted by an entertainment company from the city. He went to several competitions and auditioned in Seoul several times from thirteen to sixteen. Somehow, he was never chosen.

(his face is too big. he talks too much. he’s too short. he’s too pitchy. he needs more training. he’s too— )

The months after he was soundly rejected in Busan found him skipping vocal training lessons and school in general; faking illnesses to leave early or to not go at all. His parents and a visiting Baekbeom eventually picked up on his truancy and staged an intervention on his birthday.

Baekhyun came from school (read: playing arcade games in the city mall) to his three family members seated quietly around the small round table in the living room with a tea tray set out. There was a place set for him. Immediately, he debated running back out of the house to hide at Jongdae’s until everything was forgotten or forgiven.  
Baekbeom spoke up before he could gather his thoughts.  
“Baekhyunee, sit down. We need to talk.”  
His mother started pouring out the tea and his father lit another cigarette. Baekbeom patted the empty cushion. “Sit down.”  
Baekhyun dropped his heavy backpack to the side and sat down. His mother poured him some tea. There was even a plate of rice cakes in the centre.

The intervention hadn’t been much he could recall. His mind glazed over the imploring tones of his parents, asking him to now fully face his studies and that not all dreams came to pass and so on. Baekbeom had suggested he consider teaching or law as a career option. Baekhyun couldn’t look at their faces as they confirmed what every idol scout from Seoul to Busan had told him already. He wasn’t good enough, talented enough to do the thing he loved most.  
Naturally, he’d fought back those assumptions initially just to spite the family members and friends who thought him foolish but later, began to sincerely want more than what he’d been offered by his environment.

At the start of the summer term, Baekhyun joined the school’s theatre group and began looking at music schools all over Korea and Asia.  
Looking back, he recognises that the theatre group saved his life. Something that he had once thought himself too cool for, was what released a deep passion within him. He dropped friends for rehearsal time, he dropped parties for staying at home to memorise lines. His mother was the most surprised and glad at the change until she found his scripts in the kitchen, his parts lined in red.  
What ensued was a terse monologue from his mother, that ended in a shouting match between him and his mother. She broke the news to his father when he got back from work and they both discouraged him from continuing to pursue music.

Shaken by the gravity of their disdain, he’d randomly called up his theatre sunbae, Kim Junmyeon, who led the group and also had the lead role in the coming musical. Without really registering it, he talked for hours on the phone with a mere acquaintance and found they had unsupportive parents in common. Junmyeon was from a well-off family who owned real estate in town and in Seoul. Their thriving family business meant that Junmyeon was also very restricted in career choices and was in fact leaving for Seoul to study Business in the fall.  
The kindness of his sunbae and also realising that he wasn’t alone gave Baekhyun the courage to step up to his family’s disdain. 

He spoke to Baekbeom first, over the phone a week later. His hyung was generally easier to convince than his parents and when Baekhyun pulled out the dongsaeng card enough times, Baekbeom relented.  
“Where will you apply to?”, he asked.  
“SNU. Junmyeon-hyung is going there too. I’ll try K-ARTS as well and the one in Busan. I know that it’s hard to get into those programs but Myeon-hyung says he knows people who are studying music at SNU and he will give me their details.”  
“Hmm…. How will you tell eomma and appa? I suspect they’ll be less easy to convince and don’t forget that it comes from a good place, Baekhyunee—“  
“Yah! Don’t start that! You know that if they stopped thinking about money for a second, they would realise that my happiness is more important.”  
“I know, I know—“  
“Let’s not talk about them anymore, I can deal with it.”  
“Do you want me to come back? For support?”  
“… Yes, hyung. At least for the weekend.”  
“Ok. Take care. I trust you.”

Over Saturday dinner, after Baekbeom unpacked, Baekhyun told his parents his dream. Baekbeom pitched in and was frank and supportive. Somehow, they relented to letting him study music.  
“As long as you apply for scholarships and pay for it yourself, Baekhyun. We can’t foot the bill anymore.”  
“Yes, appa. I won’t disappoint you.”  
“If this fails for you, you’ll know we tried our best to guide you.”  
“Yes, eomma.”

***

Junmyeon gave him a list with names and email addresses of SNU alumni and current students he knew.  
“How exactly do you know this many people, hyung?”  
“We used to live in Seoul and I took singing lessons with a lot of them. They are my friends but also some of them are Yoona’s friends.” Yoona was Junmyeon’s long-time girlfriend.

The only person on the list who paid him any mind was Kim Taeyeon, a second year composer at SNU who played the guitar, the piano and was an amazing singer. She even had a YouTube channel with over 100k subscribers though the latest video was almost a year old. Her most recent video was a cover of Nam Seunghoon’s ‘Amazing’, a song Baekhyun really liked and had covered himself.  
His first email was very tentative, and he didn’t get a response till a week later, which only contained a series of smiling emojis and her SNS handles.  
On Kakao Talk, Taeyeon was effusive and generous with her time and experience. She told him what to do in the interim before application time (“lots and lots of extracurriculars… sing, dance, act, all of it… build up your knowledge of C-level music and start thinking about what you will perform for the auditions”), which scouts to look out for and what elective to take in his first year.

She was easy to fall for. Bright, bright smile and an amazing voice, whether she was singing or not. It took Baekhyun a while to come up with an answer for his feelings; the quick skipping heartbeats as he read her compliments on his singing, the way he smiled into his pillow when he listened to the playlists she sent him to practice his tenor.  
It didn’t, however, take him long to confess. He hadn’t wuite planned to at the time but they’d been talking for hours on the phone at that time. She’d been upset that day. 

“Seoul is really lonely. I miss my brother, my mom… and I can’t seem to make real friends here. It’s been three years and I still feel so -“ Taeyeon’s voice reached him softly, like they were the only two people left in the world (she always made him feel like that) and yet she was. Lonely.  
Taeyeon had been to him, for the time he knew her, bright ambitious and admirably independent. Her talent spoke for itself. He told her countless times that she would soon make it big, so big that he wouldn’t be able to call her so casually anymore.  
And so to hear her express feeling unhappy, dissatisfied, or lonely, made him want to protect her, to keep her smiling, happy, singing.  
Baekhyun wanted to offer comfort. “Taeyeon-sunbaenim..”  
“Yah, Byun Baekhyun! Why do you still use honorifics with me? Aren’t we close now?” She giggled in spite herself and the way her voice broke around what sounded to Baekhyun like a deep wound.  
He laughed too. “Okay, okay… Taeyeon-ah.. I.. I’m coming to join you soon. Once I’m in Seoul, it will no longer be lonely. I’ll take you out and.. I’ll.. I’ll come to your recitals with so many flowers and.. really.. you won’t be alone..”  
“I know, I can’t wait to see you- and to have a friend here.” Then she sighs and sniffles a little then continues, “Baekhyun-ah… you worrying about me, it means a lot but I will be fine. I have so much to do nowadays anyway I can’t even-“  
He nods even though she can’t see. “Yes, the audition… of course. But I still- I hope you can think of me as someone you can rely on, really really, I want to be this person to you.”  
The line had gone silent before he noticed.  
Baekhyun sat up on his bed. “Tae..? Are you there?”  
“Yes. Yes, I.. I’m happy you said that. Thank you, Baekhyun-ah.” Taeyeon answered all in a rush.

After that phone call, Baekhyun got it into his head that she might feel the same way. That somehow, maybe, he’d gotten so lucky, to meet a girl as amazing as Taeyeon and to be her friend. So lucky that maybe she thought of him when they weren’t messaging or on the phone.  
Once this thought, this idea occurred to him it stuck. He thought by confessing, he could give her an out of some kind, to reject him, instead of asking her if she liked him. 

He waited and waited till the semester was drawing to a close. Taeyeon was discussing an arrangement she and her mentor had put together that she thought Baekhyun could try for his SNU audition.  
It was late afternoon and Baekhyun sat with his head out the window watching the slow passerbys below. Her voice had felt so comfortable, and soft; such a perfect and unique part of the life he wanted, the life that was close now. Without thinking very much, he said, “Will you be my girlfriend, Taeyeon-ah?”  
She’d laughed a little at first, but after chastising Baekhyun for playing pranks on her and his adamant answer that it was no joke, she asked to call him back. He didn’t hear from her the rest of the day. He messaged her good night on KKT anyway, and said that things would still be the same if she felt differently. She’d replied with a smiley emoticon and a returned good night greeting.

The next day at the same time as the day before, he waited till she called. He rushed to answer, feeling more nervous that he’d ever felt at any idol audition.  
“Baekhyun-ah, hello!” Taeyeon said brightly.  
“.. Yes, hello.” He found himself smiling.  
“Baekhyun-ah.. you gave me quite the surprise but I- I like you too. I like you a lot and I didn’t really know until you said that yesterday.”  
Baekhyun couldn’t help the laughter bubbling inside him at her cute, indignant tone. “Really? You didn’t know?”  
“Yes! But after you said it, it was like- wow! Oh my god, what is this?”  
“You were nervous!”  
“Really nervous!” She was laughing too. “Ok, Baekhyun, l’ll be your girlfriend then. Just to see, you know.” She laughed again.  
Baekhyun stood up and did a mock salute. “Yes! Taeyeon-sunbae! I won’t let you down!” 

He went to Seoul over the summer break with the excuse of visiting the SNU campus and met up with Taeyeon there. She was even more gorgeous in person. They stayed in her rented room all weekend, making out and holding hands as Baekhyun tried to make her laugh. They were going to keep in touch over the rest of the break.  
“I really like you, Baekhyun-ah.” That’s what she said on the last night, whispered it into his neck.  
They chatted frequently over the summer and he went to see her one more time before the break ended. Baekhyun told Jongdae and Baekbeom he had a girlfriend and they didn’t believe him until he showed them selfies and texts she had sent him the day before.  
“Wow…. she’s pretty! Baekhyun! I’m proud right now!” Baekbeom put him in a headlock while Jongdae laughed.

Baekhyun was proud too, and happy. To be with the most beautiful, smart, talented girl he knew, and to be enough for her did wonders for his own confidence.  
He aced his SNU audition and was offered a bursary by the performance program alongside his acceptance letter.  
Junmyeon had congratulated him several times, and his parents had given him permission to go. Baekbeom had taken him to a convenience store for late night ramen and given him a heartfelt speech about how happy he was for Baekhyun. Baekhyun was happy his hyung was happy.

He sang his audition song again to Taeyeon over the phone, whispered softly like a lullaby to send her to sleep.  
He was moving to Seoul in two months then he could sing next to her.

**Author's Note:**

> My first time trying my hand at this. Lyn reading some of this on twitter and not hating it convinced me to post this on here. I can't make any promises about this being finished but I'm committed and I want to try.


End file.
